


Take Me Home, Country Roads

by Sci-fi-hero (FireGriffin)



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Gen, probably has happened in canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 15:06:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15910713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireGriffin/pseuds/Sci-fi-hero
Summary: At the bottom of Fiddleford McGucket's downward spiral, he hears a familiar song...





	Take Me Home, Country Roads

Old Man Mcgucket (or sometimes Old Man, or Hillbilly, or Bucket, depending on how much he could remember)  scurried into the Dusk 2 Dawn. He didn’t have any money, he didn’t have a shirt, but he’d be diddlydarned if he didn’t get drawn in by the smell of chaos.  
  
Between two aisles advertising whatsits and hootegabobbers (that is, that’s what they looked like… if he’d been in a better state of mind he might’ve wondered if he needed his eyes checked), he found it. A lone teenager was wrestling with the store manager for a box of chipackers.   
  
“Git your sweaty teenage hand off’a my merchandise!” exclaimed the manager.  
  
“I just wanna buy it!” the teen snapped, digging his fingers into the already mangled box. He didn’t look a day over fourteen.  
  
“Fight! Fight! Fight!” chanted McGucket, using his uncanny powers for showing up when least needed. The manager and the teenager paused to give him a weirded-out look.  
  
“….I’ll go,” McGucket sighed, only around 1/8th of a percent aware of what had just happened. The rest of him was thinking about raccoons. Their lil’ twitchy hands, like tiny bandits… heck, if he was gonna think about raccoons, he might as well—  
  
Bucket didn’t finish his thought. It wasn’t much of a thought in the first place — you could think of it as the primal instinct to imitate garbage-digging wild animal behavior.   
  
“McGucket, McGucket, McGucket,” said McGucket as he sandwiched himself between two shirts on the clothing rack, scrambling into the nook with surprising dexterity. It felt nice here. Warm, like he was being hugged by firm arms. Why, you could almost curl up an’ go to sleep in a place like this.  
  
The store had been playing music over the radio the whole time. Guck registered this all of a sudden when the song switched from easy listening to rap music. It made him want to jump outta his hidin’ spot and do a jig. All ‘a them beats, all the sadness and anger in it, but the truth behind it all, but mostly the-   
A sandwich!? McGucket leapt out of his nook, forgetting entirely about the song, which the manager of the store had abandoned her fight to change to a new radio channel, looking stricken by the sound of it.  
  
McGucket ran straight into the glass, then rubbed his nose. A sheet of glass apparently separated him from the icy insides of the refridgeratador with them luscious sandwiches cut in triangular slices and all-  
  
He backed away from the refridgerjibbidything. No sandwiches. Nuh-uh, not with them triangular slices. He didn’t know why, but it struck a right old chord of fear in his heart, thinkin’ about triangularities.   
  
The store manager, from halfway across the store, twisted the knob on her radio. The channels shifted, going from static to rap to static to rap to static to rap, to her utmost horror. The jarring sound of it almost snapped McGucket out of his thoughts, but he’d caught sight of some chipackers spilled on the floor from the fight, and he was gonna eat those up lickety-split.  
  
The manager finally settled on a channel. It was halfway through the song, and something about it made McGucket pause and really listen.  
  
 _Take me home, country roads…_  
  
McGucket frowned. He could feel somethin’ akin to clarity growin’ on him. It felt impossible, but he could almost swear he knew this song. It made him feel… focused. He hadn’t paid attention to lyrics for years… weeks, maybe!   
He’d heard jiggly happy-like banjo music before, and he’d smashed a few things in rhythm to it, but it’d all been a haze. He hadn’t been half as self aware as he felt right at this moment.   
  
_…to the place where I belong…_  
  
McGucket’s eyes drifted out of their cross-eyed position, and suddenly he could see everything in the store. The shelves, the food, the jelly beans…  
He looked down at the floor, and saw a little bit of a reflection shining back at him. Not a separate hillbilly, but his own reflection.   
  
“Eh… where do I belong?” McGucket asked the reflection on the floor, scratching his head.  “Where’d I come from?”  
  
The scrapdoodlin’ chaos of sounds and thoughts and nonsense words floatin’ through his head went quiet. He bounced one knee deliberately, trying to keep it in time with the music.   
  
_...West Virginia, mountain mama…_  
  
McGucket realized he’d been singing along to the words, and went with it. It felt right. “West Virginia, mountain mama…”  
  
Something was coming to him. A name, or a face, or a word… Ferret meat? Fireworks? Fiddl-  
  
“GET OUTTA HERE! AN’ DON’T LET ME CATCH YOU SHOPLIFTING AGAIN, OLD MAN!” Shouted the store manager. She came running at him with a broom, activating his fight-or-flight response on impact. He dropped the bag of jelly beans he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and fled on all-fours like a frightened raccoon.  
  
What he didn’t hear, as he skedaddled away and went roaming with his mind almost as blank as a blackboard, was the song as it continued in its familiar melody.  
  
 _...take me home, country roads._


End file.
